Sand Hills—— the Greatest Golf Course

Tha ideal course, Sand Hills meet that The course should have beautiful surroundings, and all the artificial features should have so natural an appearance that a stranger is unable to distinguish them from nature itself, according to the Doc’s seventh commandment. The greatest course of the past half-century is Sand Hills Golf Club.

Currently ranked No. 8 in the U.S. and No. 11 in the world, Sand Hills is a private 1994 creation of architects Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw. Almost as soon as it opened Sand Hills ushered in two trends that have flourished since: minimalist course design, and the Field of Dreams theory, which holds that if you build a truly great golf course, people will come see it, no matter how remote the location.

The minimalist movement in golf course architecture is the practice of “least disturbance,” a throwback to the ancient Scottish principle of using the land as you found it. In the construction of Sand Hills, less than 3,000 cubic yards of material was moved. Compare that to the more than one million cubic yards dislodged at most top modern layouts. Plus, only $1.2 million was spent to build the course. Shadow Creek, hewn from the barren desert of Las Vegas five years earlier, cost $40 million.

Of course, Coore and Crenshaw had terrain that was a lot more engaging. By the spring of 1993, two years into their site visits, the pair had discovered 130 possible golf holes on the property. According to architect Tom Doak, the Sand Hills site was “so perfect that they moved dirt in spoonfuls to create greens and tees, and in fact so perfect that they didn’t even have to contour half the greens. This course was, literally, already there. It cost practically nothing to physically build it.”

How do you sell national memberships to a club this remote? Simple. Create a course so pure, so varied in its shot demands and so stunning in its aesthetics that serious golfers will take to trains, planes and automobiles — and any other means necessary — to get here.

On this greatest course, you should score yourslef and score the course. Of course, AP2 Irons and R9 460 Driverscan not be missed.

Some of the most impressive, isolated courses built since Sand Hills’ debut surely owe their existence to the success of this remote masterpiece, among them Ballyneal in Colorado, South Dakota’s Sutton Bay, Kauri Cliffs and Cape Kidnappers in New Zealand, Australia’s Barnbougle Dunes, and the finest golf destination in America: Bandon Dunes Resort in Oregon.

From the heaving terrain, to the firm, fescue fairways, to the natural “blowout” bunkers in the dunes, to the boldly contoured green complexes that allow for endless variety in chipping and putting, Sand Hills is the most natural site for golf in the U.S. Throw in the persistent breezes and the endless solitude that defines westcentral Nebraska, and you have a golf experience that is second to none.

Sand Hills is difficult to get to — and even more difficult to get on. However, the layout’s virtues — and influence — can’t be underestimated. This is the greatest course of the last 50 years.

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Easy Golf: Course Architect

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